Mike Powell, a former global head of markets at HSBC, has established an acquisition vehicle to buy and consolidate financial technology companies in the wealth, asset management and insurance sectors.

The new company, called TECHSQR, will buy underperforming software firms in Europe and North America, targeting opportunities created by financial regulation and new technologies.

Powell said: “We identified these sectors as being subscale and using old legacy systems, so we are looking to consolidate and transform existing vendors into a modern tech company which will provide clients with solutions on a much more modern platform."

He is joined by Ken Yeadon, a former head of trading and sales and head of e-commerce at HSBC, and June Aitken, a former head of strategy management and global head of emerging market equity distribution at the bank.

Powell, who served as the global head of markets at HSBC until 2008, is also a partner at Thematic Capital Partners, a venture capital firm co-founded with Yeadon that invests in technology and web-based companies

TECHSQR is raising between £50 million and £75 million to finance acquisitions and Powell said the team has already narrowed down the list of potential targets to eight companies.

Global investment in financial-technology ventures has more than tripled from $928 million in 2008 to $2.97 billion in 2013, according to a report published in March by consultant Accenture. This has been driven by the development of new technologies and the need by financial institutions to manage a wave of post-crisis regulatory requirements.

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TECHSQR will deploy technology from Erudine, a London-based company backed by Powell, to extract intellectual property from the software of the acquired companies and re-deploy it through a new platform.

*Correction: An earlier version of this story said that the company was raising £75 million to £100 million to finance acquisitions. It is in fact raising between £50 million and £75 million.